Rules Not Keeping Up

Businessman Says Aquaculture Held Back

January 01, 1990|By JANETTE H. RODRIGUES Staff Writer

MATHEWS — A local businessman says his efforts to bring off-water aquaculture to the county is being stymied by "old laws that don't address" how this fledgling addition to the seafood industry should be regulated.

Some regulatory agencies, like the State Water Control Board, will not issue an aquaculture permit unless the local government has rules set up to control aquatic farming.

Until this problem is resolved aquaculture's potential won't be fully realized, says Bill Tatterson, who shelved plans to develop his project after running into regulatory roadblocks last summer.

Aquaculture is the cultivation of finfish, shellfish and aquatic plants in a controlled environment, Off-water aquaculture is done on land, and like a home aquarium, it uses fresh water, not salt water.

The Virginia Marine Resources Commission and the Game and Inland Fisheries Department are also involved with controlling the industry.

The Board of Supervisors amended the county's agricultural zoning ordinance to include aquaculture as a type of farming.

Otherwise, Mathews County does not have any guildlines in place to regulate it.

The ordinance was changed after Tatterson says he put in a variance request for a building he wanted to construct for the project.

He says that the board was more interested in focusing on what was going on in the building, than how close it would be to a property line.

The board was worried about what type of effect the project, and others like it, would have on the county's groundwater supply, says planning director Phillip S.T. "Ted" Costin.

Since off-water aquaculture uses fresh water, the board was concerned that "anybody engaging in this activity could use too much water, and cause the groundwater to withdraw," says Costin.

Tatterson says he withdrew his application after coming to the conclusion that he, and the supervisors, need to get a little more educated about the permit process.

The owner of a greenhouse business in Port Haywood, Tatterson says he is dismayed by how disorganized the state seems to be about setting up guidelines for the industry.

Aquaculture is a way to supply growing domestic demands for seafood products, says Mich ael Oesterling, a commercial fisheries specialist with The College of William and Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

"The importation of fish is the second biggest contributor to the nation's trade imbalance," says Oesterling, who continued that only petroleum ranks higher.

He says getting the money together to start a commercial fish farming business is more of a problem than who is regulating the industry.

"The state is quite willing to work with people who are intersted in aquaculture," says Oesterling.